Curt Schilling’s Hall of Fame candidacy got a public show of support on Sunday from someone who knows about being a candidate for something, and winning.
Late Sunday evening, President Trump took to Twitter and gave the Breitbart podcast host and MLB Hall of Fame candidate a solid vote of support:
Curt Schilling deserves to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Great record, especially when under pressure and when it mattered most. Do what everyone in Baseball knows is right! @marklevinshow
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 21, 2019
Schilling, who amassed over 200 major league wins in a career spanning 20 years, is set to hear whether he will win acceptance into baseball’s hallowed hall on Tuesday. Also up for induction are fellow baseball legends Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.
According to Yahoo! Sports’ Mike Oz, Schilling, along with Clemens and Bonds, should not expect to get approval from Hall of Fame voters this time around.
“With the results of this year’s vote coming Tuesday, it seems like a safe bet that neither Bonds, Clemens nor Schilling should be waiting by the phone,” Oz explained. “This won’t be their year unless everything we think we know about Hall of Fame voting turns upside down. But they should at least jot down any speech ideas they have, because it’s starting to look like Bonds, Clemens and Schilling will get in. Eventually.”
Bonds and Clemens are similar to each other in the sense that both had their careers tainted by suspicion of steroid abuse. Schilling, however, was never tainted by suspicion of steroid abuse. Instead, the two-time World Series champion is facing resistance to his obviously deserving Hall of Fame career, based entirely on his political opinions.
Schilling has been an outspoken advocate for conservative causes both before, and obviously during his time working for Breitbart. Following his MLB career, Schilling worked as an MLB analyst for ESPN. In April of 2016, Schilling was fired by ESPN for sharing a Facebook post in response to a North Carolina law which barred transgender people from using bathrooms and locker rooms that did not correlate with their assigned gender at birth.
According to the New York Times:
The post showed an overweight man wearing a wig and women’s clothing with parts of the T-shirt cut out to expose his breasts. It says: “LET HIM IN! to the restroom with your daughter or else you’re a narrow-minded, judgmental, unloving racist bigot who needs to die.”
To that, Schilling added: “A man is a man no matter what they call themselves. I don’t care what they are, who they sleep with, men’s room was designed for the penis, women’s not so much. Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic.”
ESPN announced Schilling’s firing in a statement.
“ESPN is an inclusive company,” the company said. “Curt Schilling has been advised that his conduct was unacceptable and his employment with ESPN has been terminated.”
Since that time, Schilling has continued to fight for the conservative causes he believes in while hosting The Curt Schilling Podcast, for Breitbart.
Hall of Fame candidates must get 75% of the vote to win acceptance. According to Mike Oz, Clemens, Bonds, and Schilling, are all above 70%. All three players are also in their seventh year on the ballot, meaning they have three more years to attain the needed 75%.
Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter @themightygwinn
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